The Leon County Consolidated Dispatch Agency is in turmoil after numerous response failures. The current director is stepping down next month. Many of the problems come from shortcomings in the agency’s software system.

Sheriff candidate Walt McNeil believes another hang up is the agency’s chain of command.

“I will tell you that the governance issue of having three persons that that director reports to is obviously fraught with problem[s],” McNeil says.

Meanwhile, McNeil wants to foster collaboration between the county’s law enforcement agencies with a detective bureau headed up by the state attorney. Leon has the state’s third highest violent crime rate per hundred thousand people.

“With this multijurisdictional detective bureau we’re going to work on specific crimes,” McNeil says, “like vice, and violent crime and organized crime across jurisdictional lines so that we can effectively keep these persons out of our community.”

McNeil is part of a crowded Democratic field. Current Sheriff Mike Wood, who took over after Larry Campbell’s death last year, is running to keep his post and former deputy Tommy Mills is running again after unsuccessful bids in 2008 and 2012. McNeil, Wood, or Mills will face off against Charlie Strickland—another former deputy running as an independent.

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The scene is Tallahassee’s Leon High School. Right now, it’s also the Leon County Sheriff’s Adventure Camp, students from the Leon County school district are learning CPR and getting lessons on operating an automatic external defibrillator, or AED. Deputies also give lessons on leadership skills, as well as drug abuse and gang prevention. And students build positive relationships with the officers—even calling them by nicknames.

“The deputy at my school, we all call him Big Daddy,” said Abrianna Simmons, a student at Rickards High School.

Update 12/26/2014: Funeral services for Leon County Sheriff Larry Campbell will take place at St. Peter’s Anglican Church on Tuesday, December 30, 2014 at 1:00 pm. St. Peter’s Anglican Church is located at 4784 Thomasville Road in Tallahassee, Florida.

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Leon County Sheriff Larry Campbell has died. He was 72 years old.

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